Father Knows Best was beloved by millions in the ’50s and for many years after in reruns. Fans knew nothing about what was going on behind the scenes with the clean-cut, wholesome family. This is especially true of the daughter played by Lauren Chapin, so cute she was nicknamed Kitten. This Kitten was enduring a bear of a life with a father who was a snake and a mother who was a skunk.

E! Entertainment Television chronicles the sordid details of Chapin’s life in another of its True Hollywood Story specials on Sunday. E!, which might as well stand for Expose!, really has a handle on these tawdry keyhole-peeks, but it’s puzzling why such a distressing program would be scheduled for a family holiday such as Easter.

Chapin’s True Hollywood Story plays like a Grade B exploitation flick. Her father, it is said, used to crawl into bed with her and gratify himself on her nightclothes. Astonishingly, he was the less rotten of her parents; when the couple divorced and Lauren had to choose, she opted to live with her father, despite what he did to her.

Imagine what kind of monster her mother was. Actually, it’s hard to imagine. A prototypical domineering, greed-driven stage mother, she hitched her star to Lauren’s older brother, who could do no wrong. Their mother saw and heard nothing as Lauren’s brother relentlessly beat her and humiliated her.

When Lauren was on the cusp of adulthood, her mother, a lush who lived off Lauren, sued her for the majority of her Father Knows Best earnings — and won.

The first time Lauren became pregnant, her mother told her she hoped the baby would die.The special quotes the young Lauren asking, “Mother, am I going to be beautiful?””No.” “OK, am I going to be pretty?””No.””Well, what will I be?””If you work real hard at it, maybe somebody will like you.”

Lauren became so distraught she tried to commit suicide by hanging herself. The attempt failed because the closet pole over which she strung the noose couldn’t support her weight.

Ironically, Lauren’s star was launched when an agent noticed her at an audition to which her mother had taken her brother.

Chapin thought she had found the loving family she cherished within Father Knows Best, but the people America came to embrace had little in common with the actors who played them.

Though he wasn’t nasty like Lauren’s mom, patriarch Robert Young was a heavy drinker. As for the actors who played the other children, Billy Gray was a stoner from the time he was 14 and still makes no apologies for his heavy pot use. Gray argues on the special that society will eventually come to realize it was wrong to make the weed illegal. Early in the run of Father Knows Best, while she was still playing an innocent teen-ager, Elinor Donahue was pregnant and miserable over the lengths she had to go to in order to keep her condition from the audience.

Success went to Chapin’s young head, according to Donahue, who recounts that if her co-star wasn’t prepared to come to the set, she would send word that the others would have to wait because they couldn’t do the show without her.

The immature Chapin didn’t realize how quickly stars flicker out in Hollywood. She was a has-been at 15, when Father Knows Best was canceled. This triggered a descent into out-of-control drug abuse. One of her failed marriages came in Las Vegas, while she was tripping on LSD. On another bad acid trip, she attempted to cut off her arm. Only the fact that she was so doped up kept her from succeeding.

To support her drug habit, she became a prostitute. At first, men would pay handsomely to sleep with “Kitten.” Eventually, she descended to working the street, servicing 30 to 40 men a night for as little as $5 a trick. She did time in several jails and rehab centers and still didn’t clean up her act.

It wasn’t until she found Jesus that Chapin, now in her mid-50s, was able to put her life back on track. Maybe this explains the Easter scheduling of the show. It’s a pretty flimsy justification.

Chapin’s True Hollywood Story is steeped more in titillation than redemption.